Welcome:

To the Water-ski and Wakeboard Team at the University of Minnesota.  This website contains all the information about our team, tournaments, practices, and hopefully any other questions you may have.  Essentially, we are a group of people who love any sport on the water from waterskiing and wakeboarding, to barefooting, wake skating, knee boarding; almost anything except tubing.  Our organization is open to anyone who is associated with the University of Minnesota no matter what your skill level on the water may be.    So feel free to look around!

Headlines

WAKEBOARD TEAM TAKES 3RD AT NATIONAL TOURNAMENT

Steming from the first place wakeboard performance at the 2005 Tommy Bartlets Extreme championship in the wakeboard competition, our team was invited to be one of 8 teams to participate in the Collegiate Nationals hosted by CSTV.

The tournament consisted of the top schools for wakeboarding in the nation and also featured and new tournament format where teams were pitted in a head to head competition against eachother to advance to the next round. The tournament consisted of 7 riders for each team, five wakeboarders and two wakeskaters.

Our team sent our top riders being Nick Clausnitzer, CJ Doolittle, Craig Kotilinek, Meghan Gruszynski, and newcommer Mike Busch.

The team shocked the wakeboarding community by easily advancing to the semifinal round. That was then followed by Nick Clausnitzer winning the double-up competition. The team was eliminated in the semifinal round by the University of Florida who would then go on to win the tournament. Nick Clausnitzer was recongnized as the best rider in the tournament.

For more information about the tournament please visit www.cstv.com/thecollegiatenationals.

Whitewater Wakeboard Open:

With Minnesota's top riders heading to Reno Nevada for the National tournament, not much was expected out of Minnesota at the Whitewater Wakeboard Open. Although this may have held true for the guys team not advancing anyone to the final round, it did not hold true for the women's side. The women manged to easily take a solid first place team finish with the help of Jessie Virant finishing fourth and Blair Anderson surprising all with her first place finish. Due to the lack of performace out the guys team, Minnesota was only able to take a fourth place finish overall in the tournament but was able to give some of the younger riders on the team real tournament experience.

Dominating wakeboard performance at 2005 Collegiate Extreme Championships

The Collegiate Extreme Championship is the biggest event in the midwest for barefooting and wakeboarding. The importance is contributed to the thousands of dollars in prizes provide by Barefoot International and Fly High, but even more importantly there is a boat that is on the line.

The University of Wisconsin Madison has dominated the tournament in past years. Lead by senior riders Nick Clausnitzer, Craig Kotilinek, and Paul Morris, and for the girls sophmores Jessie Virant and Erin Leline, Minnesota went into the tournament with high hopes of pulling off an upset.

The tournament began with the barefoot competition where footers were scored on wakecrosses and tricks. Only two of a possible ten footers competed for Minnesota. After the first round Paul Morris just barly missed the cutoff for the second round as he placed 13th overall.

With the completion of barefooting, wakeboard took center stage being pulled by a Mastercraft X-star. In the first round the top 3 riders of each heat advanced. Minnesota was able to advance six of their ten riders through including CJ Doolittle, Craig Kotilinek, Nick Clausnitzer, Jessie Virant, Erin Leline, and to everyone's surprise, freshman newcommer Annie Schurman.

The Women went straight to a championship round were they finished a respectable 4th, 5th, and 7th. The second round for the men was riddled with falls thus only advancing Clausnitzer to the finals in a shootout with Ben Carly. Kotilinek finished 9th in the tournament just missing the finals. In the final round, Clausnitzer was unable edge out Carly which resulted in a second place finish.

In the end, Minnesota easily took the wakeboard championship, and a second place finish overall in the tournament. Madison's 8 more barefooters were too much for Minnesota's wakeboarding to overcome. The final total scores were around 3500 points for madison and 3000 for Minnesota.